Monday, 1 April 2013

Sims 3: How To Throw The Perfect Wedding

Take the stress out of holding your sims' wedding, let me be your wedding planner! In my years of playing sims, I've yet to have a wedding go smoothly, I'll admit, but it all adds to the entertainment value. These two sims in the wedding featured here have been married many times in many different games, and I've had everything happen from one of the brides running off in the middle of saying wedding vows to feed the fish, to one of them (the same one actually, hmmm...) suddenly realising she should have had breakfast and roaring "Uklavi!!!" at the top of her voice, and pointing at her mouth at what should have been the most romantic moment of their lives.

Start by selecting your venue. Do you want it to be an intimate homely affair or do you want a grand wedding with all the frills? I usually just hold it on my home lot, you can set up a nice area in the garden, or a spacious room, with a buffet table and suitable seating arrangements. Plus you don't have to worry about getting your torturously slow sims to the venue on time. On the other hand, editing a suitable lot in edit town beforehand can give you a beautiful spacious traditional venue, without worrying about who's going to clean up afterward. However in this post I will be featuring a wedding held on a town lot to demonstrate just how visually pleasing a town venue can be if you make the effort.

A Wintery Wedding: The chilled wedding party arrive to set up nice and early.

If you for example would like your sims to have as close to a traditional church or temple wedding as you can get in sims (there being no religion or churches etc in the game), why not build yourself a little chruch (or religious building of your choice) for the town or search the exchange for one. If you like the one pictured here, it's available for download on my studio page on the Sims 3 site. I will provoid a link below. Please note the arch featured is not included in the church because I was trying to minimise EP and stuff pack content, But it's easily placed if you have it. Or your sims could be married in nature, on a beach, or a forest. You could of course opt for a private wedding with just the two sims in question.

One of the Brides, Francesca Amundo

However you decide to do it, if you want it to be a memorable occasion, take the time to do things right- how would you like you dream wedding to be? Can you replicate that with the venues and objects available to you in the game? Or do you want a theme wedding, all supernatural guests and decoration for example. Do whatever is beautiful to you.

My Wedding Tips:

BuffetTable: Change it's style to suit the mood, but for God's sake make sure you have one. Get a sim to serve it before the guests arrive or you could find it hard to get sims to it when there are guests crowding around.

Setup Early: Have everything in place beforehand, make sure there's appropriate music, to sooth grumpy sims. Make sure the house or venue is clean and tidy or you'll just have whinging sims on your precious wedding video. If you are holding it at a lot around town, get the wedding party there at least three sim hours in advance to be on the safe side. Trust me on this one. Make sure they are well fed, well rested, entertained and drained of urine before they get there. You don't want the wedding to turn into one big pool of urine. I just use cheats for this.

Photography: Assign a photographer sim, preferably one reasonably high in the photography skill to take sims-eye-view photographs if you would like your sims to have wedding photos for their walls etc. Pause frequently to get good shots. Don't forget to take some screenshots yourself if you would like to remember the day yourself. You could also get a sim to take a home movie if you have the relevant expansion.

Space: Make sure you have enough space around the area you would like the wedding to occur. Unfortunately sims just won't sit during a wedding, but having chairs set up looks the part, but make sure there's enough standing space.

Get your wedding couple in place as soon as you can: If you have a wedding arch get them near it as soon as possible, or to the spot you would like it to happen on. It can take sims a frustratingly long time to just get to the spot you want them at, and the guests may leave before the vows are spoken, if they take too long. This will result in a negative moodlet for all concerned.

Just Say "I Do": Don't doddle about. As soon as most of the guests are in place, just get the couple married, sims take forever to do the smallest things, and as I said before the guests will leave.

Be Entertained: However well you prepare sims weddings always have their fair share of frustrating and downright bizarre incidents. There's no point in taking it seriously, just sit back and enjoy the spectacle!

The Other Bride: Alter Eego (sometimes spelled Ego) on the right preparing an elaborate breakfast on the wedding morning, while best woman, Coco Amundo, Francesca's sister, opts for juice.

Best Woman Coco Amundo checks all is in order before the guests arrive.

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The Vows are Exchanged: Not that the guests could care less. There's a lot of fairies at this wedding.

And the Rings Exchanged: Sniff, I'm okay, I just have something in my eye.